The San Francisco-based online clothing company has a history of newsjacking—it made a name for itself when Mark Zuckerberg met with Wall Street bankers in (what else) a hoodie. Zuckerberg's sister Randi stumbled upon Betabrand's $148 Executive Hoodie (think worsted wool) and inventories instantly sold out.

Fast forward to this week, and the small brand has made an art of fast-turn content marketing that this week included a one-take video capitalizing on reports that Silicon Valley legend HP was banning t-shirts in its engineering department to recruit some engineers of its own.

That was Monday. On Tuesday I told CEO Chris Lindland that he had a hit on his hands. By Wednesday Adweek and FastCompany had covered the video. And whether responding to it or simply the news reports, HP Human Resources felt the need to post its own video reassuring employees that the ban was just an unfounded rumor.

I talked with Chris again this morning about his amazing week—and what is says about effective content marketing in general—and powerhouse newsjacking in particular.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/31/qa-chris-lindland-ceo-of-betabrand-on-newsjacking-hp-t-gate-video/feed/0Analyzing top social media posting keywords in any industryhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/31/analyzing-top-social-media-posting-keywords-in-any-industry/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/31/analyzing-top-social-media-posting-keywords-in-any-industry/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 14:18:33 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40168... Read more]]>Understanding what topics other brands in and around your industry are posting on, and how they perform, can accelerate your understanding of social media content as it pertains to your own brand.

So lets take a look at how you can get informative views of what’s working from several different vantage points. To do this, we’ll look at Zuum’s Subject Analyzer for posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the retail fashion industry for the following brands: Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Banana Republic, Diesel, Gap, H&M, Levi’s, Lucky Brand, Roots Canada andTommy Bahama,

The first view is the default setings, below. Note the legend on the chart for meanings of size, color and positionings of each of the terms. This is a very broad view, capturing the greatest number of topics.

The above view is interesting, but perhaps a little noisy with so many keywords. So I can adjust the “Minimum average engagement” slider to show only those posts with average engagement and above. Say around .2% engagement, as I’ve done in the chart below. Notice how this removes many of the lower performing terms, making a bigger distinction between keywords performing around average and the absolute top terms.

An example of that is the #styledby hashtag, which is orange in the above chart setting, but is light blue below. You can also see by its size that it’s one of the more frequently used keywords, especially for those with a hashtag.

From here, a next logical view would be to want to see only the terms used with high volume. This can help identify the most prominent of posting themes, including popular campaign topics from a single brand. So below, I’ve moved the second slider to show only terms posted on at least 10 times. The terms featured here are the most frequently posted on in this industry.

Note how #styledby becomes smaller again, but is also one of the most engaging terms, due to being viewed within a different mix of posts.

There’s one more view I like to use to fill out the picture of what’s going on topic-wise in a given industry. Setting the right most slider up to a figure around half of the total number of brands I’m analyzing, I can now see terms that are common across the industry.

You can see how these terms are much more generic, and can provide a good sense of the keywords that might be overused, or ones that can provide consistent performance at high volume.

Keyword analysis may not be as straight-forward as some of the other types of social content analysis, but it can be quite revealing. And with one click on any of these terms, you can go into a complete analysis of how that topic is being used. Which networks got the most posts, most engagement, top related terms, and the content calendar on that term for any brand.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/31/analyzing-top-social-media-posting-keywords-in-any-industry/feed/0Most Shared Facebook Post Topics for the CPG Dental Product Categoryhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/30/most-shared-facebook-post-topics-for-the-cpg-dental-product-category/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/30/most-shared-facebook-post-topics-for-the-cpg-dental-product-category/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:01:41 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40160Choosing a dental product for a gift may not be the most obvious idea, but as we’ll see, some products just need the right positioning.

In the Subject Explorer chart below, you can see the most shared posting themes from 5 top dental care companies over the past 3 months. Interestingly, you can see ‘gift’ is the most highly shared topic with at least 4 total posts during the time period.

You can also see a number of campaign themes, often identifiable by their hashtags, that would be interesting to explore. However, I’m interested in seeing how one sells a dental care product as a gift. The Subject Analyzer report below is the breakout of how that term was used by Oral-B.

As we mentioned, it’s often a matter of having the right positioning for your audience. Start with a practical dad, throw in father’s day even, and suddenly a dental product can make a pretty appealing gift. And for those of you familiar with typical Engagement-to-Fan ratios, you can see the performance for these posts was strong.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/30/most-shared-facebook-post-topics-for-the-cpg-dental-product-category/feed/0Persuading Mobile Users Through Innovationhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/persuading-mobile-users-through-innovation/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/persuading-mobile-users-through-innovation/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 17:44:49 +0000Jeff Hasenhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40165... Read more]]>Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said that innovation separates leaders from followers. Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis says, “You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there.”

The pace is in dispute, but the need for brands to advance technologies and find new ways to engage with the near always-on wireless user is universal.

But how? And what shape does that take?

“If you have a real specific need for doing it and you think it's going to solve a problem, being an early adopter (of technology) is great,” former JetBlue mobile lead Jonathan Stephen told me in an interview for my new book, “The Art of Mobile Persuasion”. http://artofmobilepersuasion.com

“You are quick to fail and quick to being successful. There are others out there who think this can be an enhancement to an experience and maybe those are the ones who don't necessarily jump on the early bandwagon but they continue to see as the technology improves itself, that they will adapt over time and a lot of the kinks will have been worked out. Best practice would have been created and they would have followed those guidelines.

“It really depends on the position that you're in. If you've got the capital to do that kind of investment, by all means I always think that being an early adopter is fantastic but you have to be prepared to fail. You're not going to get it right the first time (all the time). No one ever has.”

Sometimes being second, third or later has its advantages.

WhatsApp, built by former Yahoo employees as a text-messaging alternative, is a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. In 2014, Facebook purchased the company and access to more than 600 million active users for $19 billion.

“I always use the phrase, ‘I may not be early to the party but I always like to make an entrance,’” Stephen said. “Sometimes there are technologies out there and I wasn't the first to get to it but I definitely want to make sure that I get noticed when I launched that technology. It takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot of strategy in terms of what is behind it. It takes a lot of humility to take a step back and realize where you will be successful and where you want there to go.

“There will be a lot of successes and a lot of failures. You learn that over time. But more than anything it goes all the way back to that business strategy.”

Credibility is more important than that new widget, something that Stephen thinks about each time that he walks into senior management with a plan and asks for resources.

“False promises is what creates contention within the executive level,” he said. “You don't want to change the way your business has been running. If your business hasn't been innovative in the past, if the goal is to take your business out of the 1950s and get it into the future where you become this early adopter - it takes an organizational change to do that. You can't force technology upon an organization.”

Curtis Kopf, who recently left Alaska Airlines to drive change at Premera Blue Cross has, has seen – and been part of innovation – in large enterprises including Microsoft and Amazon.

At Amazon, he was part of a hand-picked 14-person team in the U.S., Europe and Asia that scaled and extended “Search Inside the Book,” a discovery tool that searches and displays the full contents of hundreds of thousands of books from domestic and international publishers.

“Every company wrestles with this,” Kopf said of innovation. “We all come from different places whether you are an airline, a bank, or Amazon.com. I've experienced the spectrum of companies based on their business model and who they are have different comfort levels and appetites.

“Amazon.com is going to be a company that makes really big bets -- things that may not materialize for five years or seven years, even ten years. Other companies won't view the world that way.”

Everyone, Kopf said, has a place.

“There's definitely a continuum of innovation and then there are obviously companies out there that are category creators,” he said. “Clearly a lot of the companies that we think of innovators weren't first. Obviously Google wasn't the first search engine (in fact, 20 were launched earlier, according to Wikipedia). They just did it in the new and better way. Apple definitely wasn't the first to do a smartphone. They just did it in a new and better way.

“Innovation is talked about so much that it is almost become meaningless. Every company on the planet says that they are innovative. It's part of their mission statement. Obviously as consumers we all interact with these brands and the truth is that they are not all innovative.”

While he was leading change at Alaska Airlines, Kopf and his team had a broad definition of innovation.

“Being an airline we want to make sure since we have 13,000 employees, many of whom are not technologists, that people are clear that innovation is not just about technology,” Kopf said. “We define innovation as solving problems in new ways. Just keep it as simple as that. And then there is a range of innovation from incremental to disruptive.

“Being first is great. There are times that being first could be really important. If you can get it an advantage that you can sustain, there's some buzz and credit that you get from customers by introducing something first. But I don't think innovation in and of itself means being first. It could be taking something that someone else started and doing it in a new way.”

The paths are diverse, but the end goal for brands remains the same – mobile persuasion that drives sales, engagement, and loyalty.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/persuading-mobile-users-through-innovation/feed/0Triumph Motorcycles' #womenwelove Facebook Campaign Analysishttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/triumph-motorcycle%e2%80%99s-womenwelove-facebook-campaign-analysis/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/triumph-motorcycle%e2%80%99s-womenwelove-facebook-campaign-analysis/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 16:01:58 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40153... Read more]]>In social media, there’s a lot to be gained from analyzing a competitor’s top campaigns. Campaigns are a good way to gain a deeper understanding of their approach to social media, and marketing in general. Analysis of a competitor’s top campaigns can show how they value the various social channels, where they allocate resources, and how their content performs across the different channels.

And if you want to find a brand’s major campaigns, look for the hashtags they use when posting. Analyzing the motorcycle industry’s top posting themes since May, I found a number of interesting topics that were posted on at least 5 times on Facebook. See the Subject Analyzer chart directly below.

Curious to see how a motorcycle brand executes a salute to women — a small portion of their customer base — I selected the #womenwelove campaign theme. Analysis of the #womenwelove campaign is in the Subject Analyzer chart below.

In the Posting Calendar chart, you can see the campaign is from Triumph, with 5 posts scattered across the last few months, as evidenced in the Posts chart. All photos, of course, per the Engagements chart.

The Top Related Terms chart gives you a quick take on the campaign’s overall content.

Also in the Engagements chart, note the engagement-to-fans (E/F) ratio of .39%

Now take a look at the Facebook Leaderboard for this industry (below), and note the E/F column. So .39% is impressive. And they did this with little to no promotion of their posts, as evidenced in the similarity between the Engagement and 24h Engagement columns.

Below are all the posts in this campaign. The campaign seems to be doing very well for Triumph, and looking at the posts, you can see why. They feature beautiful photos and have a strong human interest component. I’d only suggest they do more posting on this theme.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/29/triumph-motorcycle%e2%80%99s-womenwelove-facebook-campaign-analysis/feed/0An Instagram Leaderboard for Top Fashion Apparel Brandshttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/27/an-instagram-leaderboard-for-top-fashion-apparel-brands/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/27/an-instagram-leaderboard-for-top-fashion-apparel-brands/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 17:35:22 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40147Instagram and it’s stylized photos is obviously a natural fit for Instagram. So let’s take a look at a leaderboard of top Instagram KPIs for some of the leading apparel brands in the US market. The leaderboard chart below is for the month of June.

Immediately noticeable is that these brands have really been beefing up their Instagram follower counts. H&Ms 8 million plus followers looks more like a major brand’s Facebook fan count.

These brands are still aggressively growing their follower counts, as well, as identified in the “% Change Followers” column. Those are single month increases!

Another KPI worth noting is the average posting volume of 60 times per month. Those are Twitter-like figures. Sure, Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle are jacking that up quite a bit, but across the board most brands are posting at a strong rate.

Below is an overview of the topics and themes posted in June. I’ve adjusted the sliders to only show terms posted by 2 or more brands, to capture the more universal themes, instead of high-volume brand campaigns. You can see that these brands are in full summer content mode based on the largest (most frequently posted on) terms below.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/27/an-instagram-leaderboard-for-top-fashion-apparel-brands/feed/0Can Technology Help Solve California’s Drought?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/26/can-technology-help-solve-california%e2%80%99s-drought/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/26/can-technology-help-solve-california%e2%80%99s-drought/#commentsSun, 26 Jul 2015 18:48:26 +0000Neal Leavitthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40142... Read more]]>On April 1st, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order mandating a substantial reduction in urban water consumption compared with 2013 levels. One key element - a 25% reduction in urban water use to help mitigate the state’s worst ongoing drought in more than a century.

And while a number of climatologists and meteorologists have predicted a better than 50% chance of an El Nino winter – which means greater than average rainfall- there’s no guarantee that the desperately needed rain will arrive.

Enter the Internet of Things (IoT). The drought has spawned a welter of startups and innovative partnerships with public agencies and the private sector that utilize the IoT to find smart solutions to manage both water distribution and electricity use.

According to Tom Kouretas, an MRWPCA engineer, the agency is able to mitigate some of the costs associated with its power consumption by moving water at night when possible, and supplementing with solar energy during daylight. However, he added, the water has to be there, 24/7, and solar energy is a ‘dynamic resource’ that fluctuates continually depending on weather patterns and time of day.

“Trying to understand how best to optimize these processes and stay below peak energy demands means that the agency must understand when we are using power, what the price is on the grid, what the total load is of each process, how to distribute loads among various pumps, and how much the solar production contributes to power availability in the moment,” said Kouretas.

Milwaukee-based Wellntel, launched in 2013, has created a non-invasive sensor system that collects water level information from water wells and produces the data on graphs and charts on a private, personalized website and smartphone app. The system is placed on top of groundwater wells and emits a sonar like ping to measure well water. Wellntel has been conducting an 18-month pilot program in Templeton in California’s Central Valley; the system may prove useful in the region as groundwater levels are being depleted at an alarming rate.

San Francisco startup WaterSmart provides software to water utilities nationwide. The company collects literally hundreds of millions of data points each hour that enable utilities to discover leaks and also identify homes or neighborhoods that are heavy water users. WaterSmart also has a ticker on its website that shows how much users are saving – as this story was getting ready to post, the company claimed that WaterSmart users have saved 1,799,128,431 gallons of water; $9,530,418.58 dollars; 15,834.04 tons of carbon dioxide.

All of the aforementioned isn’t a total panacea that will resolve California’s drought overnight.

“The growing visibility of drought and water challenges in California has created a new urgency and renewed momentum for action by companies, individuals, and elected officials to take action on water stewardship at both the local and state levels.”

I’ll typically review campaigns for an industry at least monthly, to see what the latest developments are. Keeping a watch for new campaign themes and which themes are the top performers. The process begins with a review of the top subjects for any given time period. Could be a week, month, quarter, or whatever. This time I picked June, reviewing the most used and engaging posting topics for the month in the Subject Explorer chart in Zuum, below. This is for the top soft drink brands.

As hashtags are generally good indicators of campaigns, I’ll typically looks for ones that are both fairly large (indicating volume) and orange or brighter (indicating higher engagement). Below, the #obeyyourverse stands out on both accounts. It’s also an interesting play off Sprite’s overall campaign theme, Obey Your Thirst.

A click on that topic takes us into the Subject Analyzer, below, which gives us a complete breakout of the campaign (in this case, I changed the dates to reflect the duration of the campaign.

While many campaigns peak towards the end of their run, this one has a series of posts featuring Drake, which not surprisingly, jacked up the engagement for those posts. Interestingly, all the posts after that spike, in July, featured product shots of the can as the primary visual. And you can see how the engagement levels of those doesn’t compare to the Drake posts on June 28 and 29.

Also notable in the Engagements chart in the Subject Analyzer chart (above), well over 50% of the engagements happened on Instagram despite only 30% of the posts happening there. Most surprising is the low number of engagements on Facebook relative to Twitter. Sprite, however, has a highly engaged follower base on Twitter. Some additional data views of interest would be to directly compare Sprite’s Facebook posts to their Twitter posts, to see both impressions and response rates for both to better understand why the Twitter posts performed better, when the opposite is true of most campaigns.

Campaign analysis is a great way to get a deeper understanding of what your competitors are doing to succeed, whether it’s from a content, calendar or media format perspective. And for brands analyzing their own campaigns, there’s also a wealth of additional private data that most networks provide, giving additional insight into what worked, what didn’t, and how the next campaign can perform even better.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/23/analysis-of-social-media-campaign-obeyyourverse-from-sprite/feed/0Which social media networks do yogurt brands post on most?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/20/which-social-media-networks-do-yogurt-brands-post-on-most/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/20/which-social-media-networks-do-yogurt-brands-post-on-most/#commentsMon, 20 Jul 2015 16:23:55 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40127... Read more]]>As we’ve noted with other industries we’ve analyzed, how the brands allocate their posting across the different social media networks gives a good idea of how much they value each network.

Let’s take a look at the yogurt industry for the month of June, in the Global Posts Leaderboard, below.

Looking at the industry average line, you can see that Twitter is the clear leader in this category. Google Plus is a surprising second, given there seems to be less of an understanding of that network’s value. Of course, the Google Plus posting volume average is made up of only two brands, as well, which can certainly skew the results.

So lets look at the leading network, Twitter, and see how each brand is performing there.

Below, we look at the Twitter Leaderboard to see a number of performance metrics for each of the brands active on that network. Chobani not only leads in posting volume, but also has a remarkable engagement rate for their posts. Over three times the industry average in engagements-to-fans ratio

One interesting note is that Chobani’s growth rate is also a clear leader in this category and network. It shows how leading brands are willing to dedicate themselves to a network, and when they do, they often find their communities having four major qualities of social network performance. Posting volume, engagement level, community size and growth rate.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/20/which-social-media-networks-do-yogurt-brands-post-on-most/feed/0Chart: Most-shared luxury fashion topics on Facebookhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/14/chart-most-shared-luxury-fashion-topics-on-facebook/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/14/chart-most-shared-luxury-fashion-topics-on-facebook/#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 16:05:39 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40103... Read more]]>Let’s take a look at the most highly-shared topics on Facebook for luxury fashion brands. Below, in the Subject Explorer, you can see the most shared topics for the month of June. I’ve tweaked the sliders a bit to see topics with at least 4 posts during the month, to make it less likely to be driven by a single post. And I’ve also set the minimum number of pages to 2, to get topics that are used across more than one brand.

You can see from the engagement level legend on the right that the high sharing rates in these posts also led to high engagement rates, given the number of dark red topics in our cloud. Looking at the specific terms, I’m particularly interested in the hashtag #mfw, as hashtags are typically a more unified theme or topic.

So let’s take a look at that hashtag to see what it’s about and which brands are using it.

Below is the Subject Analyzer for #mfw. You can deduce from the Top Related Terms chart that this is about Milan Fashion Week, as well as see various metrics on how each brand utilized that hashtag. Twenty-two posts in a few days is pretty high volume. And it’s not surprising to see it all photos and videos.

This is a brief example of how you can quickly gain high-level insights into what topics are most shared for an industry, and then just as quickly drill down and get specific analysis on how those topics are being used. As Facebook seems to be placing more emphasis on sharing and less on the like, an understanding of the content traits associated with sharing in your industry can help you plan a content calendar that will maximize the impact of your brand.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/14/chart-most-shared-luxury-fashion-topics-on-facebook/feed/0Top 20 pet food posts on Instagram for Junehttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/top-20-pet-food-posts-on-instagram-for-june/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/top-20-pet-food-posts-on-instagram-for-june/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2015 16:35:37 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40090Categorically, pet food brands have been a little slow coming onto Instagram, which seems odd given that it’s such a visual medium, and it would be hard to think of a more photogenic subject than pets. But some brands are taking advantage of that situation. For those posting on Instagram, many are posting much more than on their other social networks, which implies that they like what’s happening when they post.

So this post is simply a look at the 20 most engaging posts for June for the brand we analyzed, based on the engagements-to-fans ratio. As you can see below, pets make for some pretty funny photos. And that’s obviously a good match with Instagram.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/top-20-pet-food-posts-on-instagram-for-june/feed/0Mobile Eats Up Everything Infographichttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/mobile-eats-up-everything-infographic/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/mobile-eats-up-everything-infographic/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2015 13:28:15 +0000Joseph Vito DeLucahttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40084As the technology advances and adoption rates continue to rise, it's no news to anyone that mobile devices are becoming a bigger part of our daily lives. We continue to consume more content and more types of content on mobile.

With that, advertisers are quickly flocking to mobile and spending more ad dollars on the platform. Yieldr breaks down mobile's growth in its latest infographic Mobile Eats Up Everything.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/09/mobile-eats-up-everything-infographic/feed/0Why so few World Cup victory posts on Facebook from US Women’s soccer sponsors?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/08/why-so-few-world-cup-victory-posts-on-facebook-from-us-women%e2%80%99s-soccer-sponsors/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/08/why-so-few-world-cup-victory-posts-on-facebook-from-us-women%e2%80%99s-soccer-sponsors/#commentsWed, 08 Jul 2015 16:19:43 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40075... Read more]]>In an analysis of 12 of the 14 official sponsors of US Soccer, I found only 3 posted about the women’s World Cup victory on their Facebook pages (I used the Facebook pages featured on each sponsor’s website listed on the sponsor page). It struck me as odd that more brands weren’t joining the rest of the country in a little flag-waving over the championship. Really, what are they paying those sponsorship dollars for?

Below, in the Subject Analyzer, is a breakout of all 6 posts from the sponsors for the week of July 1 – 7, the week surrounding the World Cup game. You can see the specific terms searched for in the posts — “soccer”, “cup” and “uswnt”. The Posts chart shows the post are, not surprisingly, all photos. And the Engagements chart shows a good amount of sharing. So the topic seems to be of interest to the fans of those brands.

To further demonstrate how little mentioning there was of the USWNT victory, here are the topics posted on during that week by the sponsors. Yes, it was July 4th, and that’s a big deal for US brands. But Sharkweek over a World Cup championship?

Here are the various brands involved in this analysis. You can see a number of other Facebook page metrics for the same week, including each brand’s posting volume for the week. Not the heaviest of posting weeks, but again, seems like a wasted opportunity to both show team support and leverage the sponsorship.

To pick out one example, the Degree Women’s US page has over 761 thousand fans, and not a single post that week on the championship, the team, or the victory.

Some possible reasons for this overall low posting volume:

It was July 4th weekend and everyone was pretty checked out.

USWNT wasn’t expected to be in the finals, so it slipped past the social team’s content calendar meeting.

Some USWNT posts didn’t use the terms in my search query, although the keyword cloud didn’t show much.

Targeted posts were used, which aren’t publicly viewable. But it would be odd they didn’t make it a public post.

At least some brands did cover the team, namely Continental Tire, Century 21 and Coppertone (maybe your brand name had to start with a “C”). Below are the top posts, ranked in order of their engagement to fans ratio. Congrats to the brands that at least got on the board, so to speak. And of course, congrats to the USWNT for a spectacular game.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/08/why-so-few-world-cup-victory-posts-on-facebook-from-us-women%e2%80%99s-soccer-sponsors/feed/0How retail fashion brands run a ‘sale’ on social mediahttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/01/how-retail-fashion-brands-run-a-%e2%80%98sale%e2%80%99-on-social-media/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/01/how-retail-fashion-brands-run-a-%e2%80%98sale%e2%80%99-on-social-media/#commentsWed, 01 Jul 2015 22:00:38 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40041... Read more]]>It can seem like fashion retailers are in constant states of running sales. However, looking at social media analytics, it looks like the brands are a little more selective about when they use that term.

Take a look at the Subject Analyzer chart below, showing the term ‘sale’ used in the first 6 months of this year. In the Posts chart, you can see a total of 81 combined posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Not that much volume given we’re talking about 10 of the largest retail fashion brands (listed at the bottom of the Engagements By Day chart). The Posting By Day chart shows how these posts occurred on a timeline.

The brand with the heaviest posting volume (and engagements generated, visible in the Engagements By Day chart), is Abercrombie & Fitch. They had two primary sales. One just after the start of the year, and their Summer Sale this June.

The next Subject Analyzer report below looks at just A&F posting for their Summer Sale, in June. Note that this sale alone involved 27 posts. A pretty remarkable amount given the entire industry only posted 81 times about a sale so far this year.

Note the Posting By Day and Engagement By Day charts. While Facebook received about half of the posting volume, the engagement happened almost entirely on Instagram. The Posting By Day chart also shows an unusual trajectory for a sale campaign, as they’ll often have a build towards the last day of the sale. In this case, there appears to be a build towards the 15th, but after taking a few days off, the campaign resumes.

At the bottom of the report directly above, you can see the top posts each for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And in the Top Posts chart, below, every post in the campaign.

A couple of things to note. On Twitter and Instagram, there’s prominent use of the #SummerSale hashtag, while on Facebook, they only mention “Summer Sale”, with no hashtag use. In general, hashtags are used on Facebook, but not to the degree they are on Twitter, and even Instagram. Also notice they often omit reference to the “Summer Sale” theme, instead mentioning that a particular item is on sale. This could be to place the emphasis on the item, making it seem more special than if it was just part of the larger Summer Sale event.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/07/01/how-retail-fashion-brands-run-a-%e2%80%98sale%e2%80%99-on-social-media/feed/0Tostitos’ #anyexcusetoparty campaign analyzed on Facebookhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/30/tostitos%e2%80%99-anyexcusetoparty-campaign-analyzed-on-facebook/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/30/tostitos%e2%80%99-anyexcusetoparty-campaign-analyzed-on-facebook/#commentsTue, 30 Jun 2015 16:05:57 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40026Below is a leaderboard showing post and page activity for a number of the leading brands in the “dips” category. You can see the brands involved in this analysis, their fan base, growth rate, posting volume, etc.

In the chart below, you can see the most impacting topics in this category for the month of May.

Campaigns are often particularly good to examine, and especially highly-engaging ones. So the #anyexcusetoparty hashtag stands out as one to explore. Below is an analysis of that campaign’s activity on Facebook. Not heavy posting volume, but except for the first week, a regular schedule of posting every Thursday. You can also see they were all photo posts.

So what are these highly engaging posts? Below, you can see the style and format. Finding any excuse for chips and dip, with the loose script and casual party scenes adding to the supposed spontaneity.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/30/tostitos%e2%80%99-anyexcusetoparty-campaign-analyzed-on-facebook/feed/0Twitter and snack foods: An industry overviewhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/29/twitter-and-snack-foods-an-industry-overview/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/29/twitter-and-snack-foods-an-industry-overview/#commentsMon, 29 Jun 2015 21:08:03 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=40019... Read more]]>While there are a lot of questions lately about Twitter, it’s business model, and its role for brands in the social media landscape, one thing is certain: Brands are continuing to use it.

Below is an analysis for some of the world’s leading snack food brands. To start, notice their volume of posting on Twitter vs the other networks. Whatever is being debated about the value of Twitter for brands, in this industry, every brand posts on Twitter more than any other network. Usually the difference is by a wide margin.

So how are they posting on Twitter? The Posts chart below is an analysis of the overall posting volume, as well as a Posting Calendar breakout for each brand.

It’s notable that despite Twitter photos having been around since 2011, only half of this industry’s tweets were photos. While photos on Facebook have performed considerably better than text for a while now, and brands have reflected that in their format selection for Facebook posts, brands are still using text posts significantly on Twitter.

Lastly, let’s look at the top posts for this industry. Below are the top 10 posts for these brands for the month of May. Per our commentary about format type, 3 of the top 10 posts are text only, including the post with the highest engagement-to-fans ratio.

And speaking of that post with the highest engagement, you can see what a remarkable level of engagement it generated. An engagement total equal to half the followers of the brand’s Twitter handle.

So while the marketing world may debate the impact and role of Twitter, it’s still clearly able to generate a significant impact for some brands.

-Briefing warning from the Daleks before firing their extermination rays on various "Doctor Who” episodes

What is one of the most well-known catch phrases on the long-running BBC series, “Doctor Who,” might eventually be uttered by a robot greeting you at your front door to take care of your termites.

Farfetched? Maybe right now, but a robot may soon be coming to your home to spray pesticides, clean your windows, and perhaps even tutor your kids.

ABI Research expects the global market for consumer robots to top $6.5 billion by 2017. BI Intelligence says the market for consumer and office robots will grow at a CAGR of 17% between 2015-2019, seven times faster than the market for manufacturing robots.

And some other key takeaways from BI Intelligence in their ‘The Robotics Market Report’:

• Three distinct categories will dominate the consumer/office side: home cleaning and maintenance; telepresence (i.e., telecommuting to events or remote offices) and advanced robots for home entertainment.

• The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is making it easier to develop robots for consumer and office applications. The report says mobile devices offer designers the opportunity to ‘outsource’ computing and user interface tasks to companion devices, allowing developers to produce app-controlled robots at more accessible price points.

• Robot vendors still face significant challenges – a lot of people are still turned off by robots too humanoid in appearance. “There is also a brewing potential for the kinds of intellectual property battles seen in the smartphone space,” added BI Intelligence.

The robot invasion is well underway. Lowe’s announced last year that the company’s Innovation Labs unit was testing OSHbot, a retail-ready, mobile multilingual robot, designed to help shoppers navigate stores quickly and easily.

Still in development, OSHbot not only knows where every piece of inventory is at all times, but has a telepresence enabling shoppers to connect with off-site experts who can provide useful home projects information.

According to Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, “home improvement is a very high involvement thing so having that ability to ask questions in your native language every time to a robot, makes the expectation that every time you’ll have the same high quality experience.”

A few other quick examples:

Tractica, a market intelligence firm focusing on human interaction with technology, reported that SoftBank Robotics and Aldebaran Robotics have tag teamed to produce Pepper, which their creators say is the first robot able to not only read and respond to human emotion, but also analyze how people are feeling and guide them in the right direction. Tractica says Nestle Japan plans to use Pepper to sell Nescafe machines in home appliance stores throughout Japan by the end of this year.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will introduce Nao at a few of its bank branches this summer on a trial basis. The robot, noted Tractica, can speak 19 languages and uses a camera to detect emotions from customers’ facial expressions.

And last year at International CES, Industry Week reported that the French-based firm Keecker rolled out a robot that can project video or other content from a tablet or smartphone to a wall or ceiling.

“You can enjoy life without being tied to the television set,” said Pierre Lebeau, the company’s founder/CEO.

Lastly, while the sky’s the limit on how robots will be utilized by marketers to sell products and services, how humans control and interact with them is a critical component for success.

“A tough challenge for small business managers with robots will be consistently hiring quality people to take care of the robots,” he said. “These devices will need to be set up, programmed, monitored and repaired. No benefit comes without a price.”

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/28/the-robot-swarm-is-upon-us/feed/0Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: How much are brands posting on each?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/25/facebook-twitter-instagram-how-much-are-brands-posting-on-each/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/25/facebook-twitter-instagram-how-much-are-brands-posting-on-each/#commentsThu, 25 Jun 2015 19:00:40 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39989... Read more]]>In this review, we’ll look not only at how much brands are posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but also what levels of engagement they’re getting, as well.

The industries under review are Luxury Autos, Pet Foods, Luxury Fashion, and Yogurt. The view is of all activity during the month of May, and we’re only going to consider brands that posted at least one time during the month on each network. Given that some brands don’t have accounts in all networks, that narrows our field a bit.

Looking at the charts below, it’s notable how similar the distribution of posting is across all four industries. Roughly 45% on Twitter, 25% on Facebook, and 30% on Instagram.

In the Posts charts below are the posting volumes for each industry, as well as the engagement distribution in the Engagements chart. If you’re curious how the posting and engagement happened over time, the Posting By Day and Engagement By Day charts have that analysis.

Instagram dominates the engagement counts for each industry except Yogurt. Twitter is conspicuous by its virtual absence in the engagement pie chart. One obvious question here is Why do brands put so much posting effort into Twitter if it’s not delivering engagements at anywhere near the rate of the other networks?

I’d say there are several likely reasons.

Twitter still has a reputation as a network geared towards high posting volume. It’s lack of a filtered-feed (a la Facebook) means fans won’t see the same content over and over. Instagram has also avoided using a filtered feed, and I think that’s been part of why posting volume has grown so much on that network.

Twitter has a lot of early adopters and influencers, and has a reputation for being an early indicator fo things to come. In that regard, brands are going to be more attentive to what’s happening there. And social networks that have a brand’s attention are more likely to get posts, as well.

Cross-posting the same content across multiple networks. I think this has been responsible for the quick growth in photos on Twitter (note the percentages in the Posts charts). Twitter and Instagram were once networks with very different content types, but photos are something of a universal language. With photos, Twitter picks up all the photo content that also goes on Instagram and Twitter, but also gets a lot of short form text content that brands can’t post to Instagram, and opt not to post to Facebook.

Have any other ideas on why brands continue to put high posting volume into Twitter despite it’s relatively low engagement numbers?

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/25/facebook-twitter-instagram-how-much-are-brands-posting-on-each/feed/0Which social media networks drive the best engagement for state tourism DMOs?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/which-social-media-networks-drive-the-best-engagement-for-state-tourism-dmos/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/which-social-media-networks-drive-the-best-engagement-for-state-tourism-dmos/#commentsWed, 24 Jun 2015 19:05:49 +0000Doug Schumacherhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39976... Read more]]>One of the more challenging tasks in social media analysis is comparing performance across different social networks. Several issues contribute to the difficulty. Networks have different content formats, and resultingly, engage users differently. The have varying engagement mechanisms as part of their user interface. And can have vastly different community sizes.

But at the end of the day, you need a point of comparison.

The fan count to engagement ratio is a common measure for engagement when using publicly available data. And while it’s accuracy lowers when comparing one post to another, when viewed across a longer time period and a number of posts, things start to average out, and it becomes a more interesting metric. One that, while not perfect, does give a sense of what type of engagement brands are able to generate, relative to their community size and posting volume.

So lets look at how this metric applies to the tourism industry, aka DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations).

The data below is for 9 state tourism DMOs for the month of May, 2015. The general formula for this engagement ratio is: Public engagements / number of posts / number of fans. This presents a percentage point figure that will tend to favor smaller community sizes, while at the same time reveal trends between networks that remain consistent across different community sizes.

Relative to that last point, you can see in the chart above how despite significant ranges between the brands within each network, there are still distinct trends between the different networks overall.

Facebook is performing remarkably well given how much larger most brand communities are relative to other networks, and the much publicized issues around the filtered feed problem and brands’ inabilities to reach significant numbers of their fans on a post by post basis. Instagram, with it’s low fan counts and uncluttered UX, is generating remarkable engagement to fan count ratios relative to the other networks. Note the consistently high engagement levels across the brands on Instagram.

Google Plus may be the surprise here, with a strong overall engagement average, although Explore Georgia is really the reason the network is anywhere near the level it is.

YouTube is quite a different animal in the social space, for several reasons. One, much of YouTube’s content isn’t actually consumed on the YouTube site, and secondly, partly because of the first reason, YouTube is not a conversational platform the way other social networks like Facebook and Twitter are. As a result, we use a different formula for YouTube, noted in the chart’s footnote.

As a marketer, to determine which networks are most optimal, you have to weigh several factors along with engagement to fan ratios. One is what’s the size of community I have on each network. Another is how much resources go into generating the content on each network. YouTube and Twitter are two extreme cases.

While engagement to fan ratio certainly isn’t an end-of-the-line metric, it does give a good sense of overall engagement, and is a good starting point for additional exploration into related metrics and the tactics of your industry competitors.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/which-social-media-networks-drive-the-best-engagement-for-state-tourism-dmos/feed/0Video Killed The TV Star [Infographic]http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/video-killed-the-tv-star-infographic/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/video-killed-the-tv-star-infographic/#commentsWed, 24 Jun 2015 08:23:33 +0000Joseph Vito DeLucahttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39968As technology advances, video has quickly become the preferred medium for consumers and advertisers alike. Whether it's desktop or mobile or in-app or web, video consumption will be sharply on the rise for the foreseeable future.

As video is eating up more consumer time spent with media, advertisers have also flocked towards the medium, bringing their ad dollars with them. Check out the latest infographic from Yieldr to learn all about the emergence of video.